Robert Stuart Middle School: A Leadership Academy

RSMS School Procedures and Policies

1. Grading Practices:

• The intent of grades should be to accurately represent the level of mastery of content standards as students complete assignments and assessments which require personal responsibility and effort. While holding students accountable for completing their assignments and assessments, the intent of our grading practices is to promote motivation for students to be successful in school and to prevent discouragement which leads to continual failure and hopelessness. The majority of final grades on a report card will be taken from assessments designed to assess the level of mastery of content standards.
• Late Work—Students are expected to hand all assignments in on time. Before/after school make up time will be assigned by the teacher..

• Student must complete all work.  Students have until the end of each quarter to complete any assignments. Missing work can be represented by a 0 or INC.  After the end of the quarter they must do the make up work in a credit recovery class. Teachers may add additional tasks and rigor to any missing assignment. Students may hand in missing assignments anytime until the end of the grading period (midterm/quarter).
• Work that is not done satisfactorily and turned in sloppily will be returned and reworked to hold students responsible. This will be completed within a week and after school help may be assigned. If students don’t attend extra help, then there will be first, a phone call home then second, a meeting with administration.
• To give teachers more time to grade and enter scores for missing work handed in, assignments that are assigned the week before the grading period (unit/midterm/quarter) should count for the next grading period. Major projects and assignments that are graded with a rubric must be completed a week before the grading period ends to give teachers time to grade.

• Incomplete/Substandard Work—If students do not earn a mastery score on a test or an assignment, teachers will require the students to retake the test or redo the work. Any assignment scored as a 69% or below is considered non-mastery work. This includes incomplete work. Students will be given a chance to learn how they can improve before they retest or redo the assignment. This is called a correction. Students have one week from receiving the grade to redo assignments and tests.  Teachers will determine protocol for retaking tests. As an incentive to encourage students to make the extra effort to improve their work to a passing level, no academic penalty will be subtracted from the new score.  
• Formative work, as described in this document, cannot be counted for more than 20% of the final grade.  The remaining portion of the grade should be comprised of summative work.

• Extra Credit—Extra credit is not allowed. Students who have failing grades will be expected to finish missing assignments or redo failing work. According to the discretion of the teacher, students may be given an alternative assignment similar in content to replace a missing assignment or a failed assignment.

2. Updating Grades:

• It is the responsibility of each classroom teacher to update their grades weekly on PowerSchool before Monday.
• When teachers collect late work, they have until the following Monday to post grades. The timely updating of grades is imperative to our system of extra help and accountability.
• It is the responsibility of each SSC teacher to print progress reports for their students every Monday and make Remediation referrals for Friday

 

3. Teacher Workday:

• A regular workday at RSMS begins at 7:55 a.m. and ends at 4:15 p.m.
• If it is necessary for a teacher to leave the building at any time before the end of the regular workday, the building principal should be notified and the teacher needs to sign out using the notebook in the office. This excludes lunch departures. Just sign out for lunch departures.

 

4. Teacher Communication:  

• Teachers are at the best on their feet not in their seat. Mailboxes, e-mails and voicemails are important means of communication within the school. Any communication from parents is expected to be returned within 24 hours. Teachers should check their mailbox, e-mail and voicemail before school, during their prep period and before leaving the building at the end of the day.

• To reduce and minimize phone call interruptions, the office and counseling staff will have student clerks deliver messages. If urgent, administration will visit in person or call. To reduce intercom interruptions, intercom announcements will be limited to the beginning and end of school. Exceptions must be cleared by administration.

 

5. Teacher Leave:

• As soon as possible notify the building principal of any leave you are requesting and schedule a guest teacher with AESOP to ensure proper coverage of your classes.
• Personal leave must be approved by the principal (fill out a leave request form to request administrator signature) before it can be granted.
• If you have personal desires to attend professional development you may request professional leave through the Professional Leave Committee.
• If the principal requests a teacher to attend professional development, the teacher will be granted admin leave. This must be entered by the attendance secretary.
• Ethically it is necessary to use sick leave for legitimate reasons only. The building principal may ask for medical documentation if the misuse of a sick day is suspected.

 

6. Preparing Your Students for Your Absence…

• Teach your students early in the year what their attitude, behavior and responsibilities should be in the event you are absent. Students should:

1. Respect the guest teacher as a regular teacher and treat him/her as a guest.
2. Help the guest teacher with routines and class procedures. Assign specific class members to help with certain duties.
3. Know the consequences for taking advantage of a guest teacher and misbehaving. They will answer to you when you return to class.
4. Know that if they are sent to the office for misbehavior, they will most likely be sent to the PASS room.  

 

7. Television Usage:

• Only movies for general audiences may be viewed as a reward activity unless permission slips are signed by parents or guardians. Movies must be approved by the principal. Full-length educational programs must be approved by the principal. Approval will only be granted if teachers can provide evidence of how it aligns to the state standards which the students are required to learn. Short educational videos or brief video clips do not need to be approved.

 

8. Student Success Class (SSC-Advisory):

• See SSC Handbook.

9. Student Attendance:

• Teachers, not clerks, must take attendance on PowerSchool as a daily routine.  Accurate marking of attendance is necessary for the attendance secretary to complete daily attendance reports. For safety and emergency situations, it is crucial to know exactly where students are on campus. 
• When students are more than 10 minutes late to first period, students must check in at the office and receive a note for class and the attendance secretary will mark the student extended tardy.

 

10. Attendance Policy:

• A parent/guardian must excuse every absence with the attendance secretary before the absence or the morning of the absence before the end of first period (8:38). As a courtesy for safety purposes, the attendance secretary will begin calling to verify all unverified absences at 10:00 A.M.

• Failure by Attendance—to receive credit for any given course, students must be in attendance for that course 90% of the time.  This means students cannot be absent more than 9 times during a semester and receive credit. If failure by attendance occurs, an appeals process is available. Appeals will most likely result in the student attending summer school. Notification by letter will be made after 3 absences approximately every 2 weeks during a semester. Documented medical excuses and funerals will not be included in the total for failure by attendance.

 

11. Student Arrival:

• Supervision begins at 7:55 a.m. Parents and students are not allowed to enter the hallways without checking in at the office before the 8:35 a.m. bell. If a parent or student wants to meet with a teacher and no prior appointment has been made, the secretary will phone the teacher for availability to meet from 7:55-8:40 a.m. Students are encouraged to use the restrooms by the gym and eat breakfast before the 8:35 bell. Students are to enter the building promptly when the 8:35 bell rings.
• Between 8:35-8:40, classroom teachers should be in front of their open doors to greet students and to supervise both the classroom and the hallway.

 

12. Student Tardiness:

• A tardy is defined as a student who enters the classroom after the teacher has shut the door coming in from supervising the hallway directly after the bell rings. Teachers are responsible for marking their students tardy on PowerSchool. 

 

13. Tardy Policy: Discipline Strikes and Consequences – tardies are cumulative for all classes.

1st Tardy          Lunch detention

 

14. Reward Activities/Academic Field Trips:

• All school functions must be approved by the administration. Functions will not be funded by district funds. Students who have been suspended for discipline and are a consistent behavioral problem will not be allowed to attend reward school functions which require travel.
• Out of State/Non-school Sponsored Travel—School functions leaving the state require approval from purchasing agent, the superintendent and the school board which takes a minimum of 45 days. For out-of-state travel, each student must fill out Student Travel Waiver to be signed by the student and the parent. The Approval form, waiver and bus requisitions for school functions are located in the front office.

 

15.Credit System:

• Students must pass 80% of credits attempted to matriculate into the next grade.
• Credit Recovery—Systemic efforts will be exhausted to prevent failure. Students who are identified as needing to recover credit after failure in Language Arts, Reading or Math after first semester may lose an elective in order to complete an alternative program (i.e. Strategic Literacy, Read 180, Title I Math or IDLA). Students who are identified as needing to recover credit after failing two semesters of Language Arts, Reading or Math must attend summer school as per district procedures.
• Alternate Mechanism—The Bridge Academy will serve as an alternate mechanism for students who are not being successful at RSMS, SHMS and OMS. The students who successfully complete level 5 of the Bridge Academy will be granted “new student” status and will receive all required credits for past failures.  
• Matriculation—Students who do not meet the requirements to move on to the next grade, and fail to recover credits, may be retained, referred to Bridge Academy/MVHS, or have other requirements placed upon them. This decision will be made in coordination between the counseling and administrative staff of the affected schools, and the student’s parent/guardian.

16. Class Changes:

• Normally schedule changes are not granted. If a parent or a student is seeking a schedule change in a core class, the parent and student must meet with the teacher to first explain their concerns and give the teacher a chance to address their concerns. After the teacher has had sufficient time to address the concerns and the parent and student are still not satisfied, the administration will then authorize the change. No schedule changes should happen without the principal and parent knowing and the teachers who it affects.  A form must be used to document the communication and the change.

 

17. Student Recognition System:

• The research is clear that recognition and reward is a key factor in student motivation.

 

18. Student Leadership:

• We are a leadership academy. We focus on content and concepts practiced by global education thought leaders. It provides a logical, sequential and balanced process to help schools proactively design the culture that reflects their vision of the ideal school. We believe in a synthesis of universal, timeless principles of personal and interpersonal effectiveness, such as responsibility, vision, integrity, teamwork, collaboration and renewal, which are secular in nature and common to all people and cultures.

Students

Robert Stuart Middle School places an unrelenting emphasis on student responsibility for learning. To that end we expect

• All work must be done on time.
• All work should meet standards.
• Students will know and plan for firm deadlines nearing the end of marking periods.
• Students will use formative assessments to identify strengths and weaknesses and, when needed, seek extra help.
• Capable students who intentionally do not complete course work should expect immediate and natural consequences in the form of make-up time assigned by the team and phone calls home.

Parents

• May confer with a teacher about student progress any time during the year
• Have online access to student progress every day of the week, 24 hours a day through PowerSchool
• Should understand that the Power School “gradebook” is a record keeping device that intends to report progress toward achievement of standards, and as such, changes frequently as indicators of growth are evaluated. No reporting devices, however, can replace the power and effect of communications between teachers, students and parents.
• Should advise their students to seek extra help when formative assessment indicates the student is struggling
• Will receive formal progress indicators eight times a year: progress reports at each mid-quarter and quarter grades every nine weeks.
• Progress reports are formative in nature and provide feedback to students and parents about strengths and weaknesses.
• Report cards are summative in nature and capture a picture of achievement of standards after nine weeks of instruction.
•  

Teachers

• Teach district curriculum and use effective instructional strategies and sound grading practices.
• Update grades by Monday of each week
• Send progress reports home weekly and formal reports at midterm and quarterly.
• Communicate student progress and respond to parent concerns within 24 hours.

 

RSMS School Procedures and Policies

KEY POINTS

 

1. Grading Practices:

• The intent of grades should be to accurately represent the level of mastery of content standards
• Students are expected to hand all assignments in on time.
• Students may hand in missing assignments anytime until the end of the grading period (midterm/quarter).
• Assignments that are assigned the week before the grading period (unit/midterm/quarter) should count for the next grading period.
• If students do not earn a mastery score on a test or an assignment, teachers will require the students to retake the test or redo the work.
• Formative work, as described in this document, cannot be counted for more than 20% of the final grade.
• Extra credit is not allowed

 

2. Updating Grades:

• It is the responsibility of each classroom teacher to update their grades weekly on PowerSchool before Monday.
• When teachers collect late work, they have until the following Monday to post grades.

 

3. Teacher Workday:

• A regular workday at RSMS begins at 7:55 a.m. and ends at 4:15 p.m.

 

4. Teacher Communication:

 

• Any communication from parents is expected to be returned within 24 hours.

 

 

5. Teacher Leave:

 

• Personal leave must be approved by the principal (fill out a leave request form to request administrator signature) before it can be granted.

 

 

6. Preparing Your Students for Your Absence…

• Teach your students early in the year what their attitude, behavior and responsibilities should be in the event you are absent.

 

7. Television Usage:

• Only movies for general audiences may be viewed as a reward activity unless permission slips are signed by parents or guardians. Movies must be approved by the principal. Full-length educational programs must be approved by the principal. Approval will only be granted if teachers can provide evidence of how it aligns to the state standards which the students are required to learn.

 

8. Student Success Class:

• See SSC Handbook

 

9. Student Attendance:

• Teachers, not clerks, must take attendance on PowerSchool as a daily routine.

 

Definition of key terms:

Assessment: the process of gathering information on student learning from a variety of sources to understand how well students are achieving standards. Assessment has two main components: assessment of learning (summative), assessment for learning (formative)

Formative assessment: the process of gathering information during the learning process. It involves constructive and specific feedback to students aimed to improve learning. Formative assessments may include homework, class activity and practice, rough drafts, and activities.

Summative assessment: is assessment of learning. It is designed to allow students to demonstrate achievement on standards. Far fewer summative assessments are given than formative assessments, but summative assessments bear the burden of showing student achievement on standards. Summative assessments may include tests, projects, writing tasks, reflections on simulations, lab assessments and EOCs.

Evaluation: the process of judging the quality of student work based on identified criteria and assigning value to represent the level of achievement attained

Diagnostic assessment: the process of gathering evidence of student learning prior to commencing instruction. This information is useful in planning instruction and in particular for individualizing program delivery. It is not used to determine student achievement levels.